"The sexualizing of race and the racializing of sex have shaped U.S. society in powerful and destructive ways. Lemire's brief, well-researched, and thoughtful book illustrates how key components of this protean process became part of the worldview of nineteenth-century white society."—Choice

"Miscegenation"Making Race in America

Elise Lemire

Introduction: The Rhetorical Wedge Between Preference and Prejudice1. Race and the Idea of "Preference" in the New Republic: The Port Folio Poems About Thomas Jefferson and Sally Hemings2. The Rhetoric of Blood and Mixture: Cooper's "Man Without a Cross"3. The Barrier of Good Taste: Avoiding A Sojourn in the City of Amalgamation in the Wake of Abolitionism4. Combating Abolitionism with the Species Argument: Race and Economic Anxieties in Poe's Philadelphia5. Making "Miscegenation": Alcott's Paul Frere and the Limits of Brotherhood After EmancipationEpilogue: "Miscegenation" Today